What Is a Questionnaire, and How Is It Used in Research?

Be it government, a for-profit organisation, or maybe a not-for-profit organisation, data collection is of paramount importance for all to urge insights on the target market and therefore the current and future prospects of an organisation.

You need to ask inquiries to get answers, and a questionnaire helps you with that.

A questionnaire is a research tool consisting of a group of standardized inquiries to gather statistically useful information on a given subject from one or more respondents. It can include written or oral questions. Questionnaires could also be quantitative or qualitative and may be conducted online, by phone, on paper or face-to-face, and questions don’t necessarily need to be administered with a researcher present.

Questionnaires are often classified as both, quantitative and qualitative method counting on the character of questions. Specifically, answers obtained through closed-ended questions with multiple choice answer options are analyzed using quantitative methods and that they may involve pie-charts, bar-charts and percentages. Answers obtained to open-ended questionnaire questions are analyzed using qualitative methods and that they involve discussions and important analyses without use of numbers and calculations

To make it simple, consider questionnaire to be written interview consisting standardized questions which may be answered face-to-face, over the telephone, through the post, or maybe online.

Purpose of Questionnaire

The main purpose of a questionnaire is to extract data from the respondents.
It’s a comparatively inexpensive, quick, and efficient way of collecting great deal of data even when the researcher isn’t present to gather those responses first hand. But a crucial factor to notice is that a questionnaire isn’t the method of analyzing the responses. The method of analyzing responses is called surveying.

Is Questionnaire Just Another Word for “Survey”?

While the 2 terms seem synonymous, they aren't quite the same. A questionnaire may be a set of questions created for the aim of gathering information; that information might not be used for a survey. However, all surveys do require questionnaires. If you're employing a questionnaire for survey sampling, it’s important to make sure that it's designed to collect the foremost accurate answers from respondents.

A questionnaire just a group of questions used to gather statistically useful information from the respondents. It’s often considered as a crucial tool utilized in the survey process.

A survey, on the opposite hand, may be a process which incorporates employing a questionnaire to ask the questions, collect responses, and analyse them to urge to a result. Analysing and appraising are important aspects of a survey which makes it different from a questionnaire.

Why Are Questionnaires Effective in Research?

Questionnaires are popular research methods because they provide a quick, efficient and cheap means of gathering large amounts of data from sizeable sample volumes. These tools are particularly effective for measuring subject behavior, preferences, intentions, attitudes and opinions. Their use of open and closed research questions enables researchers to get both qualitative and quantitative data, leading to more comprehensive results.

Types of Questionnaires in Research

There are various sorts of questionnaires in survey research, including:

• Postal: Postal questionnaires are paper surveys that participants receive through the mail. Once respondents complete the survey, they mail them back to the organization that sent them.
• In-house: during this sort of questionnaire, researchers visit respondents in their homes or workplaces and administer the survey face to face.
• Telephone: With telephone surveys, researchers call respondents and conduct the questionnaire over the phone.
• Electronic: Perhaps the foremost common sort of questionnaire, electronic surveys are presented via email or through a special online medium.

Main Considerations in Designing a Questionnaire

Once the choice has been made to use a specific format, the subsequent questions should be considered before designing the questionnaire:

• What exactly can we want to live consistent with the objectives formulated and therefore the variables identified?
• To whom will we ask questions?
• Will the respondent willingly answer this question, as asked?
• Are the respondents mainly illiterate?
• Are ethical issues involved during this question?
• How large is that the sample which will be interviewed?

The above questions are raised to make sure that the contents of the questionnaire are relevant to them.

• goals of the study, and
• individual respondents

In a sample survey, it's customary to use structured interviews instead of unstructured ones since the previous lend themselves better to quantitative chemical analysis, and therefore the latter creates serious processing difficulties, particularly if the die sample is large.

Contents of Questions

The inquiries made in surveys could be concerned with facts, opinions, attitudes, respondents’ motivation, his/her knowledge on certain topics, and therefore the like.

Most questions, however, are often classified in either of two general categories: factual questions and subjective questions.

Factual questions are fact-based, measurable, and observable.

These questions are designed to elicit objective information from the respondents regarding their background information that has such information because the respondents’ sex, education, occupation, religion, legal status, or social station.

Pros and Cons of Using Questionnaires in Research

As a mechanism for obtaining information and opinion, questionnaires have a variety of benefits and drawbacks in comparison with other evaluation tools. The key strengths and weaknesses of questionnaires are summarised in bullet points below. Generally, questionnaires are effective mechanisms for efficient collection of certain sorts of information. They're not, however, a comprehensive means of evaluation and will be wont to support and supplement other procedures for evaluating and improving teaching.

Some of the many benefits of using questionnaires as a research tool include:

PROS:

Practicality: Questionnaires enable researchers to strategically manage their audience, questions and format while gathering large data quantities on any subject.

Cost-efficiency: You don’t need to hire surveyors to deliver your survey questions — instead, you'll place them on your website or email them to respondents at little to no cost.

Speed: you'll gather survey results quickly and effortlessly using mobile tools, obtaining responses and insights in 24 hours or less.

Comparability: Researchers can use an equivalent questionnaire yearly and compare and contrast research results to realize valuable insights and minimize translation errors.

Scalability: Questionnaires are highly scalable, allowing researchers to distribute them to demographics anywhere across the world.

Standardization: you'll standardize your questionnaire with as many questions as you would like about any topic.

Respondent comfort: When taking a questionnaire, respondents are completely anonymous and not subject to stressful time constraints, helping them feel relaxed and inspiring them to supply truthful responses.

Easy analysis: Questionnaires often have built-in tools that automate analyses, making it fast and straightforward to interpret your results.

CONS:

Questionnaires also have their disadvantages, such as:
Answer dishonesty: Respondents might not always be completely truthful with their answers — some may have hidden agendas, while others may answer how they think society would deem most acceptable.

Question skipping: confirm to need answers for all of your survey questions. Otherwise, you'll run the danger of respondents leaving questions unanswered.

Interpretation difficulties: If an issue isn’t straightforward enough, respondents may struggle to interpret it accurately. That’s why it’s important to state questions clearly and concisely, with explanations when necessary.

Survey fatigue: Respondents may experience survey fatigue if they receive too many surveys or a questionnaire is just too long.

Analysis challenges: Though closed questions are easy to research, open questions require a person's to review and interpret them. Try limiting open-ended questions in your survey to realize more quantifiable data you'll evaluate and utilize more quickly.

Unconscientious responses: If respondents don’t read your questions thoroughly or completely, they'll offer inaccurate answers which will impact data validity. You'll minimize this risk by making questions as short and straightforward as possible.